


Tu Me Manques

by greycoupon



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M, MSR, Memories, Post-Episode: s03e02 Paper Clip, Season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-31 05:48:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21088076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greycoupon/pseuds/greycoupon
Summary: Written for the October fanfic exchange for the prompt "transformation".  Season 3 Mulder and Scully deal with memories, grief and being the ones who survived.





	Tu Me Manques

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ScullyLovesQueequeg](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScullyLovesQueequeg/gifts).

> Written for ScullyLovesQueequeg. This is the longest story I've ever written and by far the most involved. Kudos and/or comments are love. Thanks to @starbuck09256, @red2007 and @postmodernpromartheus for being beta rock stars.

Fox Mulder’s father was a bastard. Mulder had known this since he was a kid. Even before Samantha’s disappearance, for as long as he could remember, his father had been a bastard. He was rarely home. He was often away for work. He regularly missed birthdays and holidays. When Mulder was around five years old he had come downstairs because he heard baby Samantha crying.

She was in her playpen in the living room. 

His mother sat on the couch cradling her wedding photo to her chest, seemingly unmoved by the sobs of her child. Young Fox watched her stare off into the distance as tears rolled down her face. His mom was sad and he wanted to make it all better. He went to her and patted her on the arm.

“Mom, what’s wrong? Sammy is crying.”

His mother seemed to come back to herself.

“Nothing, everything is fine,” she told him as she got up to tend to the baby.

When Bill Mulder was home he sat in his office and drank scotch. Alone. But the most vivid memories from Mulder’s childhood, before Samantha vanished, were his parents screaming matches which were always followed by his father storming out.

After Samantha, his father didn't come home at all most of the time.

Mulder recalled a rare night when his father was there. He asked Mulder to come to his study after dinner. Mulder walked in the room to see his father seated behind his desk. The room had a dark and masculine feeling. The room always smelled of wood and pipe tobacco. Bookshelves lined the walls filled with works from The Art Of War and The Wealth of Nations to Starship Troopers. Mulder would sneak in here to borrow tomes when his father was out of town. The room always caused conflicting emotions in him. He was not welcome there. His father had made that clear when he was very small. It was a very formal and impersonal space that children wouldn’t have much use for. At the same time, when young Mulder heard sounds coming from the study, he knew his father was home and that was comforting. 

“Sit down,” Bill told his son flatly. Mulder sat in one of the uncomfortable chairs. Getting called in to see his father had prepared him well for meetings with Assistant Direct Skinner. They had the same dominant energy. He sat in the leather chair somewhat gingerly. It was formal and uncomfortably hard. The kind of chair bought just to let visitors know they really weren’t welcome. A simple but effective way for Bill Mulder to enforce the solitude he wanted.  
His father gazed reflectively at him for a long time with an expression that young Mulder couldn’t quite understand. 

“How old are you now? 13? That makes you officially a man,” Bill said with an awkward pause at the end that made Mulder worry what was coming next. 

Fox tried not to let his expression show how much it hurt that his father didn’t even know how old he was. It was hardly surprising since his dad had been gone the week of his birthday and never mentioned it when he returned.

“Actually, I’m 14 now,” he said.

Bill Mulder nodded like he had known that all along and stood to poor himself another Scotch. Mulder heard his father’s knees pop and watched him stretch like he was in pain before tending to his drink. Fox thought for the first time ever that his father seemed....old. Worn, weathered and bitter.

“How about a drink?” he asked his clearly underage son. Fox had once consumed half a beer in his friend Jimmy’s basement the summer before and hated it, but his father so rarely paid him any attention that he hesitatingly nodded his agreement,

Bill poured a liberal amount of scotch into a glass and handed it to him. Mulder sniffed at it. It smelled foul. He saw his father was staring at him and waiting so he took a sip. It burned like fire going down his throat. He had to suppress his urge to gag.

Bill studied him for a long moment. He felt like he was under a microscope. His father sat back in his chair.

“Being a man means you have to make decisions, important ones. You may think you know everything when you are young, but you know nothing. Old men like me have a lifetime worth of experience to make us smart and we have to live with the choices we make along the way.”

He downed the last of his brandy in one swig.

“I made choices when I was only a few years older than you. Self- confident with the hubris of a young man with a little power, I thought I could save the world. Be a hero. How arrogant I was.”

Bill Mulder looked more emotional than his son had seen him in a long time.

“Don’t be like me, Fox,” he continued. “Actions have consequences and the best thing you can do is be humble. You aren’t a savior or even that important. You are a tiny cog in the machine of humanity. Self-preservation is important but so is compassion and humility. Put your family first like I never did.”

Fox was really concerned by the direction of this conversation. He mostly understood what his father was saying, but didn’t know why he was saying it to him now.

Bill wasn’t looking at him. He wouldn’t look at him. He was staring down into his empty glass like all the secrets of the universe were in there. After a long and uncomfortable silence he met his son’s gaze.

“It’s late. Well past your bedtime. Time for you to go to sleep. You have school tomorrow.” He stood up and waited for him to leave

Fox felt a wave of disappointment as he walked out of the room. He and his father had been on the verge of something important. Meaningful. But he had shut him down and dismissed him like always.

His father moved out a week later, going to work in Washington DC full time and Mulder wouldn’t see his father again for almost 2 years.

So he’d had always known his father was a bastard. He showed little interest in his son as a child and even less as an adult. During his years at Oxford, and later at the FBI, it was easier to just avoid him. When he was away at school he would tell his dormmates his father died when he was 12. 

Mulder’s attempts at maintaining a relationship were largely met with radio silence. Bill was too busy with work or at least that was his excuse.

Recent events had transformed Mulder’s perspective of who his father was. Instead of seeing him just as a selfish ass, he now saw him as egotistical monster who was part of a global conspiracy, the reaches of which he couldn’t even begin to understand. Thinking about the bodies in the boxcar, the tests and the cataloging of human beings horrified him. The idea that his father was in league with people who had taken Scully made him want to vomit. The idea that his father had known Samantha would be abducted and actually tried to make his mother choose between him and his sister made him want to die. It was just so much to comprehend. He always thought he knew his father, and having studied psychology himself, Mulder thought he knew what made the man tick, but his perception of the man had completely transformed into something that lay gnarled in his gut. Being told his father objected, that he had a conscience, didn’t make the hurt any less seering. Perhaps there were more truths of the past, documented on kodak paper, once lovingly bound in scrapbooks under laminated plastic waiting to be revealed.

Mulder kept boxes full of photo albums packed away in the back of his closet. His mother had given them to him after he came home from Oxford. He had packed them up without opening a single one. Even through several moves, the boxes remained unopened. It had always been too difficult to look at the photos. The loss of his sister and, consequently, his family was a gaping wound that never healed no matter how many years passed. Sometimes he would think the scab would start healing into a scar, time acting as sutures, but inevitably something would happen to reopen the wound. Samantha’s 18th birthday. Then her 21st. A particularly bad fight with his father. He never knew what would set him back, but something always did. Mulder knew the only way to heal was to find closure. He joined the FBI hoping, with their resources behind him, he might find her. 

His attempts to get other agents interested in such a cold case were met with either resistance or flat out indifference. When he was at VCU, his superior had flipped through her case file for 10 minutes before telling Mulder it didn’t match any MO he could think of and had already been thoroughly investigated by multiple government agencies. He tried contacting the Boston field office and the only result was them threatening to report him if he kept “telling them what to do”. He had only called them 3 times in 2 days. Once on a case, Mulder met a police psychic. He had told her about Samantha’s case, but left out the personal details and led the woman to believe it was a friend’s sister. 

The psychic said she couldn’t help but, suggested “the brother” could try post-hypnotic regression. Mulder was willing to do anything to get closure so he jumped at the idea.

Mulder had always been open to the unknown. He loved Star Trek and grew up watching Leonard Nimoy host In Search of...which covered aliens, paranormal phenomenon and other out there stuff. During college he studied and wrote papers on parapsychology, much to his professor’s chagrin. So a regression sounded like a logical step. He was hoping the post-hypnotic regression would finally give him answers, but it only left him with a million questions instead.

Setting aside his musings, Mulder cleared a path to the closet where the boxes were kept. He dug around, tossing aside clothes, criminology textbooks, a spatula, and an old cat carrier before he got to them. He picked up the first box and coughed. It was covered in a fine layer of dust.

He carried it out to the living room and set it on the floor next to the coffee table. He was just tearing off the tape when the phone rang.

He caught it on the 3rd ring,

“Hello?”

There was a brief silence before Scully’s voice came across the line,

“Mulder, it’s me….what are you up to?”

“I’m just doing some house cleaning,” he told her. It wasn’t a complete lie. Moving stuff was cleaning it. But why was she calling on a Sunday?. While he was in the habit of calling at all hours of the day and night for work stuff, they didn’t usually communicate outside of the office just to shoot the shit.

“Can I come help?” she asked which surprised him even more.

Before he could tell her yes, she added,

“I’m right outside your place.” Okay, something was obviously wrong.

“Come on up,” he said. Sure enough there was a knock at the door not two minutes later.

He let Scully in and gestured to the couch.

“Have a seat.”

She was wearing jeans, a black hoodie and a rather pensive expression. She sat down and stared at her hands.

“Scully?” he prompted before sitting down next to her.

She finally looked up at him and he saw obvious distress on her face.

He picked up her hand and rubbed it between both of his in what he hoped she saw as a supportive gesture. She tried to smile at him, but her attempt at cheeriness couldn’t mask her obvious distress.

She finally spoke. “Today is,” she hesitated, “well, would have been, Missy’s birthday.”

They both had gone back to work as soon as the FBI would allow them after the loss of their loved ones and the fallout from the digital tape. He had said what needed to be said to the bureau shrink to get her stamp of approval, but really hadn’t processed or worked through his grief. He had hoped Scully had taken a healthier approach.

Scully started absently rubbing her thumb across Mulder’s palm.

“When we were growing up we always shared a room. We were always in each other’s business. I was the annoying little sister and she was the supposedly wise and full of advice older sister,” Scully said and smiled.

“Missy snored so loud. It was freight train loud. She would have friends come for sleepovers and they would always complain that she made too much noise and would go sleep in the living room. I guess I was just used to it, but it still annoyed me. After she graduated high school and moved to India, I found that I desperately missed the noise and really wished I had a recording of her sleeping sounds to listen to.”

Scully gave a small laugh. 

“I used to love watching football with her on Sundays but haven’t been able to watch a game since she died without crying. I’ve promised myself that I’d take up knitting, which was her favorite way to relax, but I can’t seem to muster up the courage to try.”

Mulder was happy she was talking about her sister and how her loss impacted her especially to him of all people.

“You should come over next Sunday and watch the post season game with me. Washington is playing the Giants. I’ll provide the chips and beer.” He mentally crossed his fingers.

That got him a big smile. Getting a Scullysmile these days for something he did was always worth celebrating. .

“Melissa lived in India?” he asked, jumping back to what she had said before as he was genuinely curious.

“Missy lived all over. Anywhere and everywhere. But yes, when she was 18 she went to an Ashram to find inner peace, or zen or something. She was never afraid to do things on her own.“

He noticed Scully looked happier when she talked about her sister.

“She made a point of pushing herself,” Scully continued. “Every year on her birthday she would do something, one thing that really scared her and if it scared Melissa, it was something big. After she left, she would always write or call to tell me what it was and how amazing it felt. I was so envious of how brave she was.”

Mulder tapped her on the forehead. “You happen to be pretty brave yourself. Being a kick ass FBI agent and all.”

She swatted his hand away from her face. “I’m the wrong kind of brave. The conventional kind. Missy never met a convention she didn’t want to bust. She was always pushing me to try new things...to go outside of my comfort zone like…,” Scully hesitated.

“What is it?” Mulder asked.

She sighed. “When...when I thought you were dead. After the boxcar I wanted to do anything I could to bring these men to justice. It didn’t know how I could since the Bureau had taken my gun and badge. Missy said the truth was in me. In my memories and I had to remember what happened to me. She gave me the name of a doctor she knew who does regressions.”

Mulder was surprised to say the least. “You did post-regression hypnosis?” That was the kind of thing she would argue with him for an hour over it being junk science.

“Yes, I did. It really wasn’t helpful. I didn’t remember anything besides being powerless and afraid.”

Mulder slid closer to her and put his arm around her shoulders.

“When I was a kid, after Samantha was gone, I never understood why my mother was so angry at my father. I thought at the time she blamed him which was stupid since he hadn’t been home. I thought she blamed him when it was my fault.”

“Mulder…” Scully sounded concerned.

He cut her off. “I know it was not my fault now. But I didn’t then. Now I understand. It was my dad’s fault and she had every right to blame him,” he added bitterly and thought and so do you. 

“I’ve been thinking a lot about my dad and his life choices and how they affected so many areas of my life and how they hurt the people I love the most.” 

He gave the box a mild kick.

“What is that?” Scully asked.

“Photos and stuff from when I was a kid. Since I found those photos in Mom’s attic, I thought perhaps there might be something here that could help me figure things out.

Mulder looked at the box for a long time.

Finally, he said, “I need to go through the box, but not today.”

He absently ran a hand through Scully’s hair and drew her closer to him.

He realized he was snuggling her and wasn’t that quite something?

“It’s a weekend and I have such fine company here.” She did laugh at that.

Feeling it was just right to do it now, he leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. Not waiting for a response he moved down and kissed her lips. It wasn’t a passionate kiss, but it wasn’t meant to be. It was the best way he knew to express the love and sanity she brought to his world.

Rather than object, Scully cupped the back of his head and ran her fingers through his hair. After a long time their mutual need for oxygen forced them to separate. Mulder slipped down onto the couch cushions and Scully went with him, laying her head on his chest.

He rubbed her back.

“How about some Playstation? I’ve got this new game called Resident Evil. It's supposed to be good. It’s a zombie murder mystery. I bought it last week, but haven’t felt much like playing,” he told her.

She lifted her head to look at him. 

“Zombies?” 

She thought for a moment.

“We don’t have any case related trauma from that.”

She sat up and looked around.

“Where’s the controller?”

They weren’t anywhere close to okay. Either of them. But they were healing bit by bit together and it was enough.


End file.
